


perhaps my heart is farce

by fensandmarshes



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I promise, Identity Issues, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, and it gets fluffy at the end, but like only slightly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: “Look, uh, do you have a problem with me being Ladybug?”“No matter who you are, you’re the girl of my dreams,” Adrien swoons, leaning closer to smirk. Their cloudy breath balloons between them.Marinette meets his eyes, cold. “That’s a yes, then.”or: adrien having two (2) identity crises at once, where one of them isn't even about his own identity
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 22
Kudos: 287





	perhaps my heart is farce

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello i'm only posting this because it's one of the seven WIPs standing between me and a marc spector/wade wilson fic but yeah have some miraculous ladybug. unbetaed  
> title from "babel" by mumford and sons!

Adrien exhales hard, trying and failing to shake the misgiving clinging to his bones and his blood and his ring. Marinette stands next to him, hands on her hips, beaming at the Paris sunset and then - his breath catches - turning the full force of her joy towards him. It’s the first time they’ve met since Yesterday - Adrien can’t help but capitalise it, given the way it’s split his perception into Before and After - and although Marinette’s still missing her spots, he blinks and almost sees them, projected over her skin. Her trappings are civilian - clothes, hair,  _ bluebell eyes  _ \- but underneath her musculature, her posture, her motions are all Ladybug.

He can’t believe they’re the same. “This feels awkward,” he confesses, “and I feel like it shouldn’t.”

Marinette - Ladybug - meets his discomfort with a grin that seems too easy to be true. “Probably,” she agrees breathlessly. “But I don’t really care - you’re  _ you _ . Tikki, spots on!”

Even her call is giddy with glee. As she transforms, Adrien fights the urge to consider her ‘Ladybug now’ - he  _ knows  _ separating the two will only get him in trouble later. “I - I mean, I  _ guess _ .” He can’t quite hide his skepticism. “Plagg, claws out.”

His transformation is in place too soon and suddenly he’s self-conscious, not sure if he should be Chat or Adrien more because they’re the  _ same  _ but he doesn’t know if Marinette,  _ Ladybug _ , wants him to act like one or the other or,  _ fuck _ , he’s totally overthinking this, because instead of balking Ladybug (Marinette) shoots him another euphoric grin and turns away, tossing her yoyo with practiced casualty to lasso a lamp-post. Adrien  _ hates  _ that, in his mind, she’s Marinette while they’re talking - her voice too familiar - and Ladybug when she springs among rooftops. He  _ hates  _ the disassociation he can’t seem to shake. But that’s just the problem - it hovers over him, uncomfortable in its omnipresence. 

He reaches for his baton and vaults after Marinette - Ladybug? How should he be thinking of her, what name should she have? - on the low roof of a clothing alterations shop. Marinette flashes a Ladybug smirk and leads him in a run across progressively higher rooves through the Paris dusk. Adrien is an uncomfortable duality, caught between insincere personas. His feet are light upon tiled rooves. He chances a joke woven through with Chat’s dialogue - “How do you ever handle the night-time without my cat vision, my lady?” - and wants to swallow his own tongue, rife with anxiety.

Marinette takes it well, though. “I think I can handle myself, kitty.”

Ladybug.  _ Ladybug  _ is the one that calls him ‘kitty’.

They split up for a minute, taking separate routes through the cobbled shadows and alleyways. (At one point Adrien glances up, pensive, and catches the crimson silhouette of Ladybug, stark and bright against the moon as she leaps between buildings with physics-defying agility. That, he remembers incredulously, is his friend. She sits behind him in class.)

(Aw, fuck, they had homework.)

After a minute, Ladybug alights next to Adrien where he’s squatting, balanced on the tips of his toes and spinning his baton absently, trying to contemplate his physics homework and refusing to let his mind drift to that one comedy anime about an OP psychic with neon pink hair. “Remind me to text, uh - a friend, later,” he tells his lady quietly, registering her presence like he was born to do it. (Sometimes he thinks he was.) “We’ve got physics homework. She tends to forget.”

“Is that  _ friend  _ me, kitty?” Ladybug asks, and her voice is Marinette’s. Adrien does a double-take. Knowledge floods him, thick with shame. 

“I was. Uh. I forgot for a moment that …” Adrien waves vaguely in Marinette’s direction. “That you were you.”

Marinette falters. “Ah.”

“Yeah. I dunno, it’s just. It’s fine. I’ll work this out eventually,” Adrien admits dejectedly, and then has a bright idea: “Let’s go right now.”   


“Go where?”

“Let’s do our physics homework together! I can explain, uh. Some concept,” Adrien suggests, floundering due to the fact that he is currently failing physics. “It’ll be cute. Because you  _ looove  _ me, my lady.”

No, of course he’s not taking refuge in overly performative flirting as a way of hiding what he’s really thinking. Why would you ask that?

Marinette sits cross-legged next to him, gazing towards the Eiffel Tower’s silhouette. It’s always exquisite. Adrien’s long since over it. “Do our physics homework in our costumes, huh?”

Adrien registers his black suit, Marinette’s red. “... Ah.”

“I appreciate the thought,  _ chaton _ .” Marinette gives his bell a gentle flick (no, that’s Ladybug’s mannerism -  _ they’re the same _ ), before withdrawing in a rush when he flinches. “Look, uh, do you have a problem with me being Ladybug?”

“No matter who you are, you’re the girl of my dreams,” Adrien swoons, leaning closer to smirk. Their cloudy breath balloons between them.

Marinette meets his eyes, cold. “That’s a yes, then."

“I’m trying not to,” Adrien entreats, “I’ll get over it - you’re  _ perfect _ . All of you. I’m just ... I’m having trouble reconciling you with -” and Adrien pauses here: reconciling who with whom? Who does he think he’s talking to? “- you,” he finishes lamely, cringing. 

Marinette’s rubbing the string of her yoyo with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, the same way she fiddles with the hem of her jacket when she’s uncomfortable. Adrien tries to let the conflation pass without notice, but they’re  _ everywhere  _ \- he can’t see how he’s been so blind. “I’m not having trouble,” Marinette says coolly; her tone is carefully nonjudgmental, but Adrien can feel her frustration.

“Even though,” Adrien murmurs, voice raspier than he’d like, “you’ve never liked Chat - you’ve always thought he was … immature, or …”

“ _ Chaton _ ,” Marinette whispers, too sweetly. “I don’t think I’m capable of disliking you. I’ve been in love with you since -”

“That’s not how you felt about Chat Noir,” Adrien says sullenly. He feels like a pouting child, and grasps clumsily for the remnants of his belligerent righteousness. They’re gone. 

“I didn’t dislike you.” Ladybug cups his cheek with one hand, and Adrien takes the touch but lets his glare smoulder in her direction. “You’re my partner. You’re my friend. Now I just know that you’re the love of my life, too. I never disliked Chat Noir, you silly cat.” She boops his nose. It’s an uncomfortably demeaning gesture. “You just got on my nerves sometimes. I’m sorry, honestly, if I  _ ever  _ made you feel like you weren’t enough.”

“You know -” Adrien falters. “When I’m Chat. I can speak my mind, say what I want, without being.  _ Stifled. _ I’m not the perfect model you’d like to think I am, my lady.”

Marinette waits. Listens.

“So,” he continues, as best he can, the words sticky and honest in his throat. “You know. I get it if you’re disappointed.”

“ _ Disappointed, _ ” Marinette murmurs incredulously. “You think I’m disappointed?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Adrien retorts, full of false cheer.

Ladybug cups his face in her hands and kisses him, full force. She breaks away after a minute of heady breathlessness on both their parts, looks Adrien in the eyes. (Even those, for him, are a mask - green-tinted to hide their shade.) “You’d think,” she murmurs, too close. He’s a little short-circuited but trying his best. “Maybe. You’d just. Shut up and realise that I’m in love with you, you stupid cat.”

“But,” Adrien tries helplessly. “Uh. Gah.”

Marinette smirks, which should really not be an expression she’s allowed to make, due to its effect on Adrien’s poor, poor bluescreening brain. “I love you, Adrien Agreste,” she murmurs, too close. And then: “And Chat Noir. And all your faces in between. With your permission -?”

“That’s my line,” Adrien grumbles, before kissing her back.

The two are thus occupied for several minutes.

  
  
  


Adrien peers down at the alley below them. There’s a  _ very  _ badly-dressed and  _ very  _ noisy villain-of-the-week shouting unpleasantness to no one in particular. “I didn’t know we were adding Doctor Seuss to our rogues’ gallery,” he practically purrs, elbowing Marinette in the side, and she shoves him in retaliation, very nearly knocking him off the rooftop and into the narrow street below.

Adrien can’t have that. It would ruin their dramatic entrance! They drop from the sides of the alley together, shadows in red and black, silent as cats’ paws treading amongst the dark. One in front. One behind. Marinette swirls her yoyo in an ellipse of neon red, placing her free hand on her hip. Adrien crouches, readying his Cataclysm. 

The akuma shrieks in fright and drops a pocket watch to the ground, where it shatters. A butterfly slips free from one of the shards; Marinette’s yoyo flicks out to catch it, naturally as breathing, and Adrien wants to make a joke about how she takes his breath away.

But also, like, what the  _ fuck. _

Adrien pouts - he was kind of hoping for an opportunity to fight in sync with Ladybug, using the clarity of battle to come to terms with his best friend’s duality - and the two of them watch Hawk Moth’s influence dissipate, totally bemused. A figure drops to their knees, as is par for the course. “This isn’t so bad,” Adrien says appreciatively. “Usually there’s actual fighting involved.”

They don’t need to look as they fist-bump. Adrien, for his part, is hyperconscious of his lady’s physicality, where exactly she is in space - he’s always needed to be, so that they can work in sync flawlessly, a well-oiled machine - and he trusts her to be there when he reaches out. Hmm, this extended metaphor isn’t really about fist-bumps any more, is it? Ah, well. Adrien can have a little theatric sappiness. As a treat.

“We make a good team,” Marinette says, like every cliche  _ ever  _ \- it’s so scripted that Adrien actually cringes. 

But sue him, it’s kind of sweet. “That was never in question, my lady,” Adrien murmurs smugly, dropping into a sweeping bow. “We’re purrr-actically made for each other.”

“Sure, kitty.” Contrary to her words, Marinette meets his mischievous glance with a stare so earnest (so  _ loving _ ) it hurts to look at.

(Holy  _ fuck _ . Marinette, who is Ladybug, is  _ in love with him _ . It’s never been so on display before now, but there’s no denying the rawness in his lady’s eyes.)

“You are, uh.” Adrien stumbles. “Very. Guh.”

“Cat got your tongue?”

(Holy  _ fuck _ . Adrien is  _ in love _ with this girl.)

Marinette waits patiently for him to answer, before tugging uncomfortably at the fabric of her Ladybug suit in a gesture so familiar it hurts - it’s the same way she fidgets as a civilian. “SO. Adri - ah, Chat. Are you feeling any -” She sweeps her hand up and down, indicating her spots. “Less weird? About … this?”

“Ugh, I  _ guess _ ,” Adrien mock-grumbles, shooting Marinette a grin.

“That’ll have to do for now,” Marinette sighs good-naturedly, winking to let him know she’s only teasing.

“You’ll live, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps,” Marinette grins, spinning her yoyo, ready to leap away. “I wouldn’t worry, kitty. I think we’ll get there in the end.”

**Author's Note:**

> my miraculous ladybug fic can have a little saiki k reference ... as a treat


End file.
